Without naming names, United CEO Scott Kirby is calling out other carriers for trying to fly too many routes with too few workers.
Alaska, Spirit and Frontier also had double-digit percentages of canceled flights in late December.
Kirby made the remarks during a call with analysts and reporters that was billed as a discussion of his company’s fourth-quarter financial results. He struck a contrarian tone. Most airline executives rarely take public shots at their competitors. And they are unfailingly optimistic, often treating massive flight disruptions and other setbacks as freak events caused by Mother Nature or some other factor beyond their control.
Not surprisingly, Kirby said United is taking a different approach. He said it has invested in technology, has more employees per flight than before the pandemic, keeps more spare planes and isn’t pushing the schedule too hard. However, those steps have raised United’s cost to fly one mile, not counting fuel, about 15% above 2019′s level.
United’s rate of canceled flights last year was slightly better than most rivals but not the best. Among the six largest U.S. airlines, Delta canceled 1.4% of its scheduled flights in 2022 while United dropped 2.0%, Alaska 2.4%, American 2.5%, Southwest 3% and JetBlue 3.1%, according to tracking service FlightAware.All of those airlines faced another obstacle last week. More than 1,300 U.S.
Like Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian and American Airlines CEO Robert Isom, Kirby defended the FAA but said Congress doesn’t give the agency enough money to keep up with its growing workload, which now includes monitoring drones and rocket launches and stepping up its scrutiny of operators after two Boeing 737 Max tragedies in 2018 and 2019.and predicted that 2023 earnings will easily top Wall Street forecasts. Still, shares of United Airlines Holdings Group Inc. lost 4.
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